I now have my FreeNAS server working. It has about 40Tb of free space, from eight 8Tb drives. The box has been up for almost two weeks, and has been reliable and useful so far, although I still consider this to be the test phase.
It is now time to start planning how the old Windows Home Server (WHS) box will be used. I would like to run it as another FreeNAS server, with about 10TB free space. That would be enough for it to work with our most-used data. The goal would be to then have this server backed up to the big FreeNAS server, giving us two copies of all our critical files.
Just for fun, I replaced the boot drive in the WHS box with a 2.5" SSD that had been the boot drive in the FreeNAS system during testing. The FreeNAS system final configuration uses an M.2 NVMe drive to boot, leaving all eight SATA ports free for data drives.
The WHS box booted into FreeNAS, saw all the drives attached, and was ready to create a pool using RAIDZ2. Given the age of the hardware, this was quite surprising.
My question to those here with more experience than I have is - is this a good idea?
Hardware configuration of the WHS server:
ASUS P5P800 motherboard
P4 CPU 3.8Ghz, 4 cores, 8 threads
4GB RAM installed - this is the max the motherboard supports
Marvell 88E801 Gigabit LAN controller
Eight SATA drives attached in total, including the boot drive.
IDE optical drive
Two PCI SATA controllers attached, each with 4 SATA ports. I can't see the brand, but they were cheapies at the time.
AGP Video card
This box was build over 10 years ago, and has been running WHS since without issue. Were it not for some of the limitations of WHS, I would have kept the box running for a while longer.
FreeNAS booted on this hardware, saw everything, showed no issues, and was ready to use all installed hard drives to create a pool. I had no trouble linking to the box from another PC, so the network controller was recognized.
The only issue I encountered was an inability to get the system to boot from a USB drive. That is why I went with an existing FreeNAS install. It was my intent to start with a fresh install on the SSD. Looks like I will have to burn FreeNAS to a CD/DVD to be able to install with this hardware.
I am a bit concerned about running FreeNAS with only 4Gb RAM. That alone may force me to do what I originally expected to be needed - new motherboard, CPU, RAM, and CPU cooler.
What is the consensus here? Would it be safe to run with this hardware? Or should it be expected that this hardware will prove unreliable?
Thanks in advance!
It is now time to start planning how the old Windows Home Server (WHS) box will be used. I would like to run it as another FreeNAS server, with about 10TB free space. That would be enough for it to work with our most-used data. The goal would be to then have this server backed up to the big FreeNAS server, giving us two copies of all our critical files.
Just for fun, I replaced the boot drive in the WHS box with a 2.5" SSD that had been the boot drive in the FreeNAS system during testing. The FreeNAS system final configuration uses an M.2 NVMe drive to boot, leaving all eight SATA ports free for data drives.
The WHS box booted into FreeNAS, saw all the drives attached, and was ready to create a pool using RAIDZ2. Given the age of the hardware, this was quite surprising.
My question to those here with more experience than I have is - is this a good idea?
Hardware configuration of the WHS server:
ASUS P5P800 motherboard
P4 CPU 3.8Ghz, 4 cores, 8 threads
4GB RAM installed - this is the max the motherboard supports
Marvell 88E801 Gigabit LAN controller
Eight SATA drives attached in total, including the boot drive.
IDE optical drive
Two PCI SATA controllers attached, each with 4 SATA ports. I can't see the brand, but they were cheapies at the time.
AGP Video card
This box was build over 10 years ago, and has been running WHS since without issue. Were it not for some of the limitations of WHS, I would have kept the box running for a while longer.
FreeNAS booted on this hardware, saw everything, showed no issues, and was ready to use all installed hard drives to create a pool. I had no trouble linking to the box from another PC, so the network controller was recognized.
The only issue I encountered was an inability to get the system to boot from a USB drive. That is why I went with an existing FreeNAS install. It was my intent to start with a fresh install on the SSD. Looks like I will have to burn FreeNAS to a CD/DVD to be able to install with this hardware.
I am a bit concerned about running FreeNAS with only 4Gb RAM. That alone may force me to do what I originally expected to be needed - new motherboard, CPU, RAM, and CPU cooler.
What is the consensus here? Would it be safe to run with this hardware? Or should it be expected that this hardware will prove unreliable?
Thanks in advance!